Solo/Duo queue returns to League of Legends

A few months ago Riot Games removed Solo and Duo queue from League of Legends to be replaced by Dynamic Queue and now Flex Queue. This was not a well met change by League players, and a few months later players can once again choose to queue alone, or with a friend. Patch 6.23 brings a number of changes and fixes to champions, gameplay and a small rework of the champion Shyvana.

Let’s not forget the release of Camille.

Shyvana was already a relatively strong champion, but now she’s even more terrifying.

Shyvana’s unique strength is that she periodically gets to ignore one of the juggernaut class’s core weaknesses: reliably getting to their targets. Ignoring weaknesses doesn’t help when you’re too behind to flex your strengths, which is why Shyvana has such a hard time clawing her way back from a disadvantage. Broadly speaking, we aimed to give Shyvana more flexibility and help her make better use of juggernaut items. In Dragon Form, Flame Breath’s been redesigned away from a basic damage cone toward something she has more options around using. Dragon Form now gives health instead of resistances, letting her leverage health-scaling items like Titanic Hydra and Sterak’s Gage.

In exchange, we shaved off some mechanics she should still be able to function without. Burnout’s flame trail in Dragon Form asked Shyvana to stay in front of enemies she otherwise wanted in front of her, so we nixed it. We also had to shrink Dragonborn’s resistances based on playtest results, though rather than pure nerfs, we added in a way for her to gain back some resistances if she and her team play the objective game well.

The biggest change of course comes with her ultimate, Dragon’s Descent, which was easily countered with knock back. Now, Shyvana can not be stopped during Dragon’s Descent. Other champions to receive minor buffs were Akali, Anivia, and Shen. Jungling was also in a tight spot after patch 6.22 and received some minor changes with experience.

The time investment we ask of junglers to take the Krugs wasn’t paying off as much as we’d like. As a result, we’re shifting some of the jungle experience from the Raptors to Lesser Krugs. Overall, the amount of experience in the jungle is about the same, but it’s slightly more concentrated in the Krugs.

Basically, small Krugs give more experience now.

There was also a skin update for Lux – Elementalist Lux, as seen below.

Other than that, the biggest point to notice for patch 6.23 is of course (as mentioned above) the return of Solo/Due queue, and no real changes have been made to Flex Queue yet, which still remains disabled in certain regions.